Given that the extant constitutional rights have proven ills-suited toward recognizing the rights of homeless persons (even to have a blanket or to be fed), Professor Sara Rankin's article, "A Homeless Bill of Rights (Revolution)," available in draft on ssrn, is an important look at state constitional efforts. Rankin surveys current efforts to advance homeless bills of rights in nine states and Puerto Rico, concluding that such efforts are likely to have more of an incremental social impact than any immediate legal impact.

Homeless bills of rights present an important opportunity to impact American rights consciousness. The emergence of these new laws may encourage housed Americans to confront—and perhaps one day, overcome—our persistent, deeply-rooted biases against the homeless. Regardless of whether homeless advocates’ ideal provisions are enacted, enforced, or implemented in the near future, even modest versions of these new laws can stake an important claim in the movement building process. After all, the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights remained dormant and aspirational for years after their enactment, but like all declarations of fundamental rights, these documents set crucial goals for society to achieve over time.

Certainly, however, such laws would counteract the increasing "ciminalization" of homelessness that she discusses:

Of 234 cities surveyed by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP), 53 percent prohibited begging or panhandling in public places, 40 percent prohibited camping in public places, and 33 percent prohibited sitting or lying down in public places. These laws authorize police to perform “sweeps” to clear public areas of homeless people. Police sweeps often result in the confiscation and destruction of personal belongings, including identification, documentation, medications, and other property of sentimental value.

Rankin's article is an important read for anyone considering the constitutional parameters of addressing homelessness.

The Fourth Circuit ruled in Wall v. Wade that a Virginia prison's requirement that inmates show physical indicia of their faith before participating in Ramadan violated the Free Exercise Clause.

The case arose when Wall, an inmate at the Red Onion State Prison, or ROSP, in Pound, Virginia, sought a religious accommodation to participate in Ramadan--special meals served before sunrise and after sunset. But ROSP policy required prisoners to show "physical indicia" of their faith--such as a Quran, Kufi, prayer rug, or written religious materials obtains from the prison Chaplain's office--before receiving the accommodation. Wall had none of these, because his "physical indicia" were lost when he was transferred to ROSP from another facility. So officials denied his accommodation.

Wall nevertheless skipped breakfast and concealed a portion of his meal in his cell to save until after sunset. ROSP staff discovered the food and threatened to charge Wall with possessing contraband. As the court wrote, "Faced with choosing between starvation and sanctions, Wall ate during the day and violated his religious beliefs."

Wall filed formal complaints and later sued, arguing that ROSP policy as applied to him violated RLUIPA and the Free Exercise Clause. The district court dismissed the case, but the Fourth Circuit reversed.

The court held that the policy violated the four-part test in Turner v. Safley:

First, demanding specific physical items as proof of faith will rarely be an acceptable means of achieving the prison's stated interest in reducing costs. Strict application of such a rule fails even a rational connection requirement. . . .

[Second, i]t is clear that Wall was absolutely precluded from observing Ramadan because of the defendants' actions. . . .

[Third, w]e are not satisfied that the defendants have sufficiently explained how a less restrictive policy would have imposed a significant burden on prison resources. . . .

Finally, we are satisfied that there existed "easy[] [and] obvious alternatives" to the challenged regulation.

The court ruled that Wall's rights were "clearly established," and that ROSP officials therefore did not enjoy qualified immunity.

The court also rejected the claim that Wall's case was moot in light of the Prison's changed policy. Applying the "voluntary cessation" doctrine, the court wrote, "We have no difficulty concluding that the defendants failed to meet their "heavy burden" of establishing that it is not "absolutely clear" the 2010 Ramadan policy will not be reinstated."

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in Harris v. Quinn, the case testing whether fair-share fees for non-union in-home care providers in the Illinois Medicaid program violate the First Amendment. (Our argument preview is here.) The Court in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education previously upheld public-sector fair-share fees to support a union's collective bargaining activities in the interests of preventing free-riders on a union's activities and promoting workplace peace. But this case put Abood directly in the Court's cross-hairs, as the petitioners argued to overturn the decades-old case.

If today's arguments are any indication, that seems an unlikely result.

Still, it's not entirely clear what the Court will do with the case. For one thing, there was just a lot of confusion about it. For example, on the question whether the union's work here (in the state's Medicaid program) represented advocacy on a public matter (thus strengthening the non-members' claims), no clear position emerged. Here's an exchange between Justice Kagan and the attorney for the petitioners (the home-care workers):

Justice Kagan: But you're not objecting, I think, to the union as a whole. What you're objecting to is an individual employee having to support that activity. The scale is no different. It's an individual employee.

Mr. Messenger: Yes, it's an individual employee being forced to support that expressive activity. So the question becomes: What expressive activity are they being forced to support? And when you're speaking of changing an entire government program, for example, Medicaid rates across the board, that is a matter of public concern. That is a matter of lobbying or political --

Justice Kagan: But that's exactly what the individual employee in Justice Scalia's hypothetical is arguing for. He wants wage rates to be changed across the board. He knows they're not going to be changed just for him. He wants higher wage rates.

Mr. Messenger: But, again, under this Court's private--under the public conern test, an individual simply speaking to that usually does not rise to a matter of public concern.

Chief Justice Roberts jumped in during the respondents' argument to underscore the problem. He made a point that under the state's position one union's advocacy for increased Medicaid rates might be an issue of public concern (as in a teacher's union), but another union's advocacy for the same incrased Medicaid rates is a private employment issue (as here), suggesting that that can't be.

Justice Breyer quickly rescued the respondents and outlined the opposite position--"Collective bargaining with any employer, meat packers, hours, safety depends on hours, always can involve public interest questions"--arguing that the Court shouldn't be in the business of this kind of line-drawing.

The one to watch here may be Justice Kennedy. He suggested at one point that nearly all of this union's activities were public matters, but at a different point that the Court's jurisprudence provides (at least) a partial solution: non-members can be compelled to pay fair-share fees for those activities that might involve free-riding, but not for other activities for which they don't receive a benefit. (Justice Scalia piped in to remind us that under the Court's jurisprudence non-members can opt-out of fees for benefits that they don't enjoy.) The problem here may be sorting out which kind of benefit is which.

Justice Alito underscored this problem when he pressed the state on a hypothetical non-union teacher who has to pay a fair-share fee to support the union's advocacy of the tenure system. But the teacher disagrees with the union's position on this, so has to pay another organization an equal amount to represent his or her views--just to counteract the advocacy supported by his or her compelled fair-share fee. Justice Kennedy posed a similar hypo. The state responded that here the fair-share fee supports union activity that benefits all workers, but it's not clear that a majority bought it, or, if they did, that they weren't also thinking beyond the narrow facts of this case.

The case also involved several puzzles, both practical and jurisprudential, that seem to put the petitioners' positions at odds with common sense and doctrine. Here's Justice Sotomayor raising one with the petitioners:

Justice Sotomayor: Is there a problem for the State to say--the union, to organize has a certain amount of costs. So putting aside fair representation laws, could the State say, this is what we're going to pay police officers, 100 dollars, but we're going to pay union members 110 to reimburse them for the cost of negotiation. Would that be OK?

Mr. Messenger: Yes.

Here's Justice Kagan raising another:

Justice Kagan: Because here's the thing: That in the workplace we've given the government a very wide degree of latitude and there's much that the government can do. It can fire people. It can demote people for things that they say in the workplace, not for things that they say as a citizen . . . .

So you're saying, well, the government can punish somebody for saying something, but the government in the exact same position cannot compel somebody to say something they disagree with. And I want to know what's the basis for that distinction, which it seems to me is just as hard as -- as if you were answering under the petition clause.

There was also significant confusion about whether the state's flexibility in negotiating wages--and therefore why the union's participation is necessary. (If the wages are set--by the Medicaid program, for example--what benefit does the union bring?)

Justices Scalia and Alito both expressed some skepticism over the state's intent in requiring fair-share, Justice Alito suggesting that it was Governor Blagojevich's reward to the union for a huge campaign contribution.

In rebuttal, Justice Scalia pressed the petitioners about free-riding and what their position could do to unions; Justice Kagan pressed them about what their position would do to "thousands and thousands" of public contracts that include fair-share provisions. Justice Kagan earlier put a finer point on the case's significance and with the help of respondents' counsel told us just what's at stake:

Justice Kagan: So, Mr. Messeenger, even on the compulsory fees, I mean, what strikes me is that this is -- I'm just going to use the word here, it is a radical argument. It would radically restructure the way any workplaces across this country are -- are run.

And let me just put it to you this way and ask if you agree with this -- with this statement. Since 1948, since the Taft-Hartley Act, there has been a debate in every State across this country about whether to be a right-to-work State and people have disagreed. Some States say yes, some States say no. It raises considerable heat and passion and tension, as we recently saw in Wisconsin. And -- but, you know, these are public policy choices that States make.

And is it fair to say that what you're suggesting here, your argument, is essentially to say that for 65 years, people have been debating the wrong question when they've been debating that, because, in fact, a right-to-work law is constitutionally compelled?

The United States Supreme Court in Zablocki v. Redhail (1978) held unconstitutional a Wisconsin state statute requiring judicial permission for a marriage license for any person who had a support order for a minor.

The opinion, authored by Justice Marshall, considers the case as one of equal protection and opines that

our past decisions make clear that the right to marry is of fundamental importance, and since the classification at issue here significantly interferes with the exercise of that right, we believe that "critical examination" of the state interests advanced in support of the classification is required.

The Court also states that more recent decisions "have established that the right to marry is part of the fundamental "right of privacy" implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause," citing Griswold v. Connecticut.

Thus, although not as famous as Loving v. Virginia, Zablocki v. Redhail is also frequently cited in any argument that marriage is a fundamental right, notwithstanding the Court's qualification in Zablocki that "not every state regulation which relates in any way to the incidents of or prerequisites for marriage must be subjected to rigorous scrutiny," but only ones that interfere directly and substantially with the right to marry.

In a new essay, Chronicle of a Debt Foretold: Zablocki v. Red Hail, by Tonya L. Brito, R. Kirk Anderson and Monica Wedgewood, forthcoming in The Poverty Law Canon and available on ssrn, the authors revive the importance of the wealth inequality relevance of the case and also reveal a racial aspect. Redhail, whose name is actually Roger Red Hail, is a Native American man, now in his late 50s, who still owes child support for the child he fathered when he was 16. Although the "child" is now in her 40s, he owes the money to state (with interest) and the state continues to garnish his wages.

There is a possibility that Red Hail's pending child support cases now under the jurisdiction of Milwaukee County would be transferred to the Oneida Tribal Judicial System.

The essay is a must-read for anyone considering the constitutional ramifications of equality or marriage.

Chicago Municipal Code Section 8-20-100 says, in relevant part, that "no firearm may be sold, acquired or otherwise transferred wtihin the city, except through inheritance of the firearm." Firearms dealers and would-be gun buyers sued, arguing that it violated the Second Amendment. Judge Chang agreed, granting summary judgment in their favor.

The court used the two-step process sanctioned by the Seventh Circuit: first, the court determined whether the ban fell within the Second Amendment as it was understood in 1791 (when the Bill of Rights was ratified) or in 1868 (when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified); second, the court determined whether the ban satisfies a varying, but heightened, level of scrutiny.

As to step one, the court concluded that "[t]he City's proffered historical evidence fails to establish that governments banned gun sales and transfers at the time of the Second Amendment's enactment," and therefore the Second Amendment applies. As to step two, the court applied "not quite strict scrutiny" (because the ban "prevents Chicagoans from fulfilling, within the limits of Chicago, the most fundamental prerequisite of legal gun ownership--that of simple acquisition") and that the ban didn't sufficiently serve the city's interests in reducing criminals' access to guns, restricting gun acquisition in the illegal market, or eliminating dangerous gun stores from Chicago.

Judge Chang gave the city "limited time, before the judgment becomes effective, to consider and enact other sales-and-transfer restrictions short of a complete ban," and invited the city to move for a stay pending appeal.

In its highly anticipated judgment in Canada v. Bedford, the Supreme Court of Canada has unanimously declared several provisions of Canada's criminal code regulating prostitution and sex work to be inconsistent with the Canadian Constitution's Charter of Rights and thus unconstitutional, although it suspended the declaration of invalidity for one year to allow Parliament to act.

The provisions of the criminal code at issue were:

§ 210 making it an offence to keep or be in a bawdy‑house;

§ 212(1)(j) prohibiting living on the avails of prostitution; and,

§213(1)(c) prohibiting communicating in public for the purposes of prostitution.

All there were declared inconsistent with §7 of the Charter which provides "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice." The Court was clear that it was security - - - and not liberty - - - that was the animating principle for its decision.

Importantly, prostitution itself is legal in Canada, an important underpinning of the Court's decision. The Court reasoned that the criminal code provisions at issue heightened the risks prostitutes face, by not merely "imposing conditions" but also going "a critical step further by imposing dangerous conditions on prostitution" and prevent "people engaged in a risky — but legal — activity from taking steps to protect themselves from the risks."

The Court rejected the notion that the created danger was "negated by the actions of third‑party johns and pimps, or prostitutes’ so‑called choice to engage in prostitution."

The Court then engaged in a type of purpose, means, and balancing analysis familiar in constitutional law. Quoting from the Court's handy summary of its reasoning and holding in this lengthy and scholarly opinion,

[First], the negative impact of the bawdy‑house prohibition (s. 210) on the applicants’ security of the person is grossly disproportionate to its objective of preventing public nuisance. The harms to prostitutes identified by the courts below, such as being prevented from working in safer fixed indoor locations and from resorting to safe houses, are grossly disproportionate to the deterrence of community disruption. Parliament has the power to regulate against nuisances, but not at the cost of the health, safety and lives of prostitutes.

Second, the purpose of the living on the avails of prostitution prohibition in s. 212(1)(j) is to target pimps and the parasitic, exploitative conduct in which they engage. The law, however, punishes everyone who lives on the avails of prostitution without distinguishing between those who exploit prostitutes and those who could increase the safety and security of prostitutes, for example, legitimate drivers, managers, or bodyguards. It also includes anyone involved in business with a prostitute, such as accountants or receptionists. In these ways, the law includes some conduct that bears no relation to its purpose of preventing the exploitation of prostitutes. The living on the avails provision is consequently overbroad.

Third, the purpose of the communicating prohibition in s. 213(1)(c) is not to eliminate street prostitution for its own sake, but to take prostitution off the streets and out of public view in order to prevent the nuisances that street prostitution can cause. The provision’s negative impact on the safety and lives of street prostitutes, who are prevented by the communicating prohibition from screening potential clients for intoxication and propensity to violence, is a grossly disproportionate response to the possibility of nuisance caused by street prostitution.

The Supreme Court of Canada's unanimous opinion affirms a judgment by the Court of Appeal for Ontario and one might believe that Canada's remaining criminalization of sex work have been vanquished. However, the Court recognized that the "regulation of prostitution is a complex and delicate matter," and that Parliament "should it choose to do so" could "devise a new approach, reflecting different elements of the existing regime." The Court suspended its declaration of invalidity for one year. And one might say that the "ball" is now in Parliament's "court."

In its unanimous opinion in Griego v. Oliver, the New Mexico Supreme Court has declared that the state must recognize same sex marriages. The court found that

barring individuals from marrying and depriving them of the rights, protections, and responsibilities of civil marriage solely because of their sexual orientation violates the Equal Protection Clause under Article II, Section 18 of the New Mexico Constitution. We hold that the State of New Mexico is constitutionally required to allow same-gender couples to marry and must extend to them the rights, protections, and responsibilities that derive from civil marriage under New Mexico law.

Interestingly, the court concluded that any prohibition of same-sex marriage raised a classification based on sexual orientation (and not sex), although its rationale raised the specter of the kind of formal equality at issue in Plessy v. Ferguson:

We do not agree that the marriage statutes at issue create a classification based on sex. Plaintiffs have conflated sex and sexual orientation. The distinction between same- gender and opposite-gender couples in the challenged legislation does not result in the unequal treatment of men and women. On the contrary, persons of either gender are treated equally in that they are each permitted to marry only a person of the opposite gender. The classification at issue is more properly analyzed as differential treatment based upon a person’s sexual orientation.

Nevertheless, the court found that the appropriate level of scrutiny was intermediate:

because the LGBT community is a discrete group that has been subjected to a history of purposeful discrimination, and it has not had sufficient political strength to protect itself from such discrimination. . . . the class adversely affected by the legislation does not need to be “completely politically powerless, but must be limited in its political power or ability to advocate within the political system.” Nor does intermediate scrutiny require the same level of extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process that strict scrutiny demands. It is appropriate for our courts to apply intermediate scrutiny, “even though the darkest period of discrimination may have passed for a historically maligned group.”

The court notes that its "decision to apply intermediate scrutiny is consistent with many jurisdictions which have considered the issue," citing the Second Circuit in Windsor, as well as the same-sex marriage cases from Iowa and Connecticut.

The court found that the same-sex marriage ban did not survive intermediate scrutiny. It considered three governmental interests advanced for prohibiting same-gender couples from marrying in the State of New Mexico:

promoting responsible procreation

responsible child-rearing

preventing the deinstitutionalization of marriage

As to the last interest, the court noted that the defendants conceded there was no evidence that same-sex marriages would result in the deinstitutionalization of marriage, and the court implied this interest was "intended to inject into the analysis moral disapprobation of homosexual activity and tradition" and flatly rejected it.

As to procreation and child-rearing, the court rejected these interests as the governmental interests underlying New Mexico's marriage laws: "It is the marriage partners’ exclusive and permanent commitment to one another and the State’s interest in their stable relationship that are indispensable requisites of a civil marriage." But the court also found that neither interest would be substantially served by the prohibition of mariage to same-sex partners.

Thus, by a relatively brief opinion (approximately 30 pages) the New Mexico Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that same-sex marriages must be allowed in the state. Because the decision rests on the state constitution, it is not subject to review by the United States Supreme Court and New Mexico becomes the 17th state to allow same-sex marriages on the same terms as other marriages.

Occuring amidst significant problems, such as the recent federal district judge's opinion casting doubt on the constitutionality of the collection of metadata from Verizon and the Edward Snowden revelations, the report concludes that the "current storage by the government of bulk meta-data creates potential risks to public trust, personal privacy, and civil liberty." But the report recognizes that government might need such metadata, and therefore recommends that it be held by "private providers or by a private third party." The report also recommends a series of changes at NSA, including having the Director be a "Senate-confirmed position" and suggesting that the Director be a civilian (at least next time).

There is some interesting constitutional analysis and rhetoric in the report. For example, under "Principles," the first one is "The United States Government must protect, at once, two different forms of security: national security and personal privacy." How should these interests be balanced? The report, quite interestingly, says this:

It is tempting to suggest that the underlying goal is to achieve the right “balance” between the two forms of security. The suggestion has an important element of truth. Some tradeoffs are inevitable; we shall explore the question of balance in some detail. But in critical respects, the suggestion is inadequate and misleading.

Some safeguards are not subject to balancing at all. In a free society, public officials should never engage in surveillance in order to punish their political enemies; to restrict freedom of speech or religion; to suppress legitimate criticism and dissent; to help their preferred companies or industries; to provide domestic companies with an unfair competitive advantage; or to benefit or burden members of groups defined in terms of religion, ethnicity, race, or gender. These prohibitions are foundational, and they apply both inside and outside our territorial borders.

The purposes of surveillance must be legitimate. If they are not, no amount of “balancing” can justify surveillance. For this reason, it is exceptionally important to create explicit prohibitions and safeguards, designed to reduce the risk that surveillance will ever be undertaken for illegitimate ends.

Certainly, there is much more to glean and analyze from the 300 plus page report, but some of the reasoning already seems noteworthy.

The judge's scholarly opinion includes a discussion of Edward Said's groundbreaking book Orientalism as a critique of the well-known passage in the United States Supreme Court’s 1879 decision in Reynolds v. United Statesupholding the criminalization of polygamy by reasoning, in part, that "Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people."

there is no “fundamental right” to polygamy under Glucksberg. To phrase it with a “careful description” of the asserted right [citations omitted], no “fundamental right” exists to have official State recognition or legitimation of individuals’ “purported” polygamous marriages—relationships entered into knowing that one of the parties to such a plural marriage is already legally married in the eyes of the State. The fundamental right or liberty interest that was under consideration in Glucksberg is instructive for the analysis of whether the asserted right to polygamy is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition, and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed.”

The judge also found that the criminalization of what it called the "religious cohabitation" portion of the statute did not rise to the level of a fundamental right, extensively discussing Lawrence v. Texasand the Tenth Circuit's limiting interpretation of Lawrence.

However, the judge did find that "the cohabitation prong does not survive rational basis review under the substantive due process analysis." This analysis implicitly imported a type of equal protection analysis, with the judge concluding:

Adultery, including adulterous cohabitation, is not prosecuted. Religious cohabitation, however, is subject to prosecution at the limitless discretion of local and State prosecutors, despite a general policy not to prosecute religiously motivated polygamy. The court finds no rational basis to distinguish between the two, not least with regard to the State interest in protecting the institution of marriage.

Complementing this conclusion regarding discriminatory enforcement, the judge's free exercise of religion analysis concludes that while the Utah statute may be facially neutral, the cohabitation prong is not "operationally neutral" and not of general applicability. The judge therefore applied strict scrutiny to the cohabitation prong and easily concluded the statute failed.

As an alternative free exercise analysis, the judge reasoned that the cohabitation prong also merited strict scrutiny because it involved a "hybrid rights" analysis under Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith (1990), given the claims of due process, but also claims that the judge did not extensively analyzes such as free association, free speech, establishment, and equal protection.

Thus, the judge concluded the cohabitation prong of the statute is "unconstitutional on numerous grounds." However, the court explicitly narrowed the constructions of “marry” and “purports to marry" in the statute, so that the Utah statute continues to "remain in force as prohibiting bigamy in the literal sense—the fraudulent or otherwise impermissible possession of two purportedly valid marriage licenses for the purpose of entering into more than one purportedly legal marriage." Not surprisingly then, the judge's opinion does not cite the Supreme Court's opinion last term in United States v. Windsor involving DOMA and same-sex marriage, in which Justice Scalia, dissenting, invoked the effect the decision would have on polygamy. [I've previously discussed the similarities of same-sex marriage and polygamy claims here].

Given the district judge's narrowing construction and the clear constitutional issues with the Utah statute's breadth, it might be possible that the state does not appeal.

In its long-awaited opinion in Koushal v. NAZ Foundation, the Supreme Court of India has reversed the 2009 decision of the Delhi High Court that §377 of the Indian Penal Code was unconstitutional under the India Constitution and upheld India's sodomy law as constitutional.

The Supreme Court decision noted that India's sodomy law was pre-constitutional - - - and derived from British rule - - - and also that the Court certainly had the power to declare the law unconstitutional as inconsistent with several provisions of the India Constitution, including

Article 13 (Laws inconsistent with or in derogation of the fundamental rights)

Article 14 (Equality before law)

Article 15 (Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth)

Nevertheless, the Court stated that there is a presumption of constitutionality given the "importance of separation of powers and out of a sense of deference to the value of democracy that parliamentary acts embody."

In its anxiety to protect the so-called rights of LGBT persons and to declare that Section 377 IPC violates the right to privacy, autonomy and dignity, the High Court has extensively relied upon the judgments of other jurisdictions. Though these judgments shed considerable light on various aspects of this right and are informative in relation to the plight of sexual minorities, we feel that they cannot be applied blindfolded for deciding the constitutionality of the law enacted by the Indian legislature.

(para 52).

For United States scholars, such concern for nationalism certainly echoes the dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, in which the United States Supreme Court held unconstitutional a state law criminalizing sodomy. Yet in the India context, the fact that its constitutionalism is linked to British rule as well as the fact that the sodomy law is a product of colonialism (and is a law that the colonial power has since repudiated as former Australian High Court Judge Michael Kirby has analyzed as England's "least lovely" export) are distinguishing features.

Certainly, however, the problematizing of judicial review in the context of sexuality occurs in the United States cases as well as those from South Africa, an issue extensively discussed here.

And certainly, advocacy on behalf of "the so-called rights of LGBT persons" will be moving to India's Parliament.

The defendant, Jamshid Muhtorov, is charged with "provid[ing] and attempt[ing] to provide material support and resources, to wit: personnel . . . to a foreign terrorist organization, specifically the Islamic Jihad Union . . . knowing that the organization was a designated terrorist organization, that the organization had engaged in and was engaging in terrorist activity and terrorism, and the offense occurred in whole or in part within the United States" in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2339B. The notice says that the government

hereby provides notice to this Court and the defense, pursuant to 50 U.S.C. Secs. 1806(c) and 1881e(a), that the government intends to offer into evidence or otherwise use or disclose from acquisition of foreign intelligence information conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 . . . .

The Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs in Clapper lacked standing to challenge warrantless wiretaps, because they couldn't show that they'd been, or would be, wiretapped under the specific statutory authority they sought to challenge. Now that the government has disclosed that its evidence resulted from warrantless wiretaps, Muhtorov has clear standing to challenge the wiretaps.

This merely puts the legality of the wiretaps before the courts; it doesn't answer the underlying question. For that, we'll have to await the ruling and appeals.

The National Assembly has authority to revise the constitution; it is considering amendments during a session from October 21 to November 30, 2013. The government opened the draft constitution up for public and official comment on January 2, 2013, and received tens of thousands of submissions. But as HRW points out, some who campaigned for changes found themselves targets of government reprisal.

The letter urges the assembly to "ensure that the amendment process brings the constitution into conformity with Vietnam's obligations under international law so that it fully protects the rights and liberties of all people in Vietnam, which will contribute to the country's development." In particular, the group is concerned about these:

-Weakened protections against arbitrary arrest;

-Expansion of the one-party state;

-Extension of control over the armed forces by the Communist Party

-Broad limitations on rights, broader than limitations recognized under international law;

-A weak judiciary and Constitutional Council.

The group also recognized some positive developments, including the more frequent references to human rights, and extension to both citizens and non-citizens; explicit reference to the right to life; a new ban on discrimination on political, economic, cultural, and social grounds; a new prohibition on gender discrimination; new criminal procedure rights; bans on forced labor and child labor; the establishment of a Constitutional Council; and the creation of a National Election Commission.

The states of Arizona and Kansas have announced that they will require voters to register separately for state and federal elections--using the standard federal form for federal elections, but using more stringent requirements for state registration.

The moves are a response to the Supreme Court's ruling this summer in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. That case held that the federal requirement under the National Voter Registration Act that states "accept and use" an approved and uniform federal form for registering voters preempted Arizona's requirement that voters present evidence of citizenship at registration. (Under this system, state voters could register for federal and state elections all at once, using the same standardized federal form, with the same requirements.) The result: the Court struck Arizona's proof-of-citizenship add-on to the standardized federal form.

So the states sought a work-around, so that they could retain a proof-of-citizenship requirement for some voter registration. And they came up with the only voter registration that they now seem to have control over: registration for state elections.

The states say that Inter Tribal applies only to federal elections, that they can design and use their own forms for state elections, and that voters who register using only the federal form are qualified only to vote in federal elections (and not state and local elections). To the states, this all means that a two-tiered system makes sense.

Under the two-tiered system, voters in those states could register for federal elections using the NVRA standardized federal form. But voters would have to show additional proof of citizenship--of the kind struck in Inter Tribal--in order to register to vote in state elections.

The moves harken back to practices in the Jim Crow South and stand as a barrier to voter registration. Ari Berman argues over at The Nation:

In the Jim Crow South, citizens often had to register multiple times, with different clerks, to be able to vote in state and federal elections. It was hard enough to register once in states like Mississippi, were only 6.7 percent of African-Americans were registered to vote before the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And when the federal courts struck down a literacy test or a poll tax before 1965, states like Mississippi still retained them for state and local elections, thereby preventing African-American voters from replacing those officials most responsible for upholding voter disenfranchisement laws. . . .

Over 300,000 voters were prevented from registering in Arizona after its proof-of-citizenship law passed in 2004. In Kansas, 17,000 voters have been blocked from registering this year, a third of all registered applicants, because the DMV doesn't transfer citizenship documents to election officials.

At the very least, the two-tiered systems promise to complicate voter registration and maintenance of voter lists for the states.

The Department of Justice will tell a criminal defendant in coming weeks that evidence used against him derived from eavesdropping, The New York Times reports. The disclosure--the first in a criminal case--will give the defendant standing to challenge the government's authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct surveillance against non-U.S. persons outside the United States, even when they're communicating with people within the United States.

Recall that the Court ruled earlier this year in Clapper v. Amnesty International that human rights and media organizations and attorneys lacked standing to challenge Section 702 of the FISA, which authorizes the surveillance, because they couldn't show that they had been, or would be, targets of surveillance. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli represented to the Court in the case that prosecutors tell defendants when they're using evidence derived from FISA surveillance. In particular, he wrote in the government's opening brief in the case,

If the government intends to use or disclose any information obtained or derived from its acquisition of a person's communications under [FISA Section 702] in judicial or administrative proceedings against that person, it must provide advance notice of its intent to the tribunal and the person, whether or not the person was targeted for surveillance . . . . That person may then challenge the use of that information in district court by challenging the lawfulness of the . . . acquisition.

Government's Opening Brief at 8 (emphasis added).

But this turns out to be false, according to the NYT. The Times reports that SG Verrilli discovered that prosecutors weren't telling defendants, after all.

The discovery came in the fallout of a speech by Senator Dianne Feinstein. That speech, touting FISA, suggested that the government used FISA-derived communications successfully in several cases. But when defendants in two of those cases pressed prosecutors, the prosecutors said that they didn't have to say whether they used FISA-derived communications.

This prompted SG Verrilli to ask national security lawyers why nobody told him before he filed his brief (and made similar comments at oral argument). Government lawyers then argued over whether they had to disclose, with SG Verrilli taking the position that do. Verrilli's position apparently prevailed, and the government will disclose to a defendant in coming weeks.

The move will give standing to the defendant to challenge Section 702, notwithstanding Clapper. That's because the defendant will be able to show, with certainty, that he was subject to FISA surveillance--something the Court said that the Clapper challengers couldn't do.

But it's not clear whether prosecutors will disclose to already-convicted defendants who were convicted on FISA-derived communications, and, if so, what will happen in those cases. It's not even clear how many of those defendants there are.

The Idaho Supreme Court ruled today that a magistrate judge's order dismissing a party's motions because the party had been found guilty of contempt for for failing to pay child support violated the party's right to access the courts.

The case is notable because it invokes the Idaho Constitution's "Open Courts" provision--a common provision in state constitutions, but one that's relatively rarely litigated and has spawned a notoriously confused jurisprudence in the state courts. More: the court apparently reached out for the issue.

The case, State of Idaho Department of Health and Welfare v. Slane, involved a father's motions for child custody and modification of child support. The father had been previously judged in contempt of court for failing to pay court-ordered child support, and he was unable to purge the contempt when he filed his motions. A magistrate judge then dismissed the motions because of the father's inability to purge the contempt and pay back child support. A lower court upheld the magistrate's ruling.

The Idaho Supreme Court reversed for reasons dealing with the details of the contempt and the details of the magistrate's order. But then it added an alternative basis for its ruling: the magistrate's order violated the state constitutional open courts provision.

Article I, Section 18 of the Idaho Constitution says that "Courts of justice shall be open to every person, and a speedy remedy afforded for every injury of person, property or character, and right and justice shall be administered without sale, denial, delay, or prejudice."

This kind of "open courts" provision is common in state constitutions. Open courts provisions first appeared in early state constitutions (borrowing from language in Magna Carta), and later state constitutional drafters appear to have simply lifted the text--sometimes modifying it slightly, but without any real thought about what it means.

That's led to a notoriously confused jurisprudence among state courts in interpreting state constitutional open courts provisions. In short, many states have an open courts provision, but courts across states can't seem to agree on exactly what "open courts" means.

So the Idaho Supreme Court's ruling is notable for dealing with open courts--for giving it some dimension and definition, at least in this context. But it's notable for a couple other reasons, too. For one, the court seems to have reached for the issue. Neither party seems to have argued it (based on the briefs, at least), and it's dicta. (The court could have hung its hat on its analysis of the details of the contempt and the magistrate's order, but it added this alternative reason for striking the magistrate's order.) Moreover, in ruling the way that it did, the court overruled three of its own opinions (from the mid-twentieth century) "to the extent that they are inconsistent with this opinion."

The upshot of all this is that the father gets his motions reinstated.

The complaint alleges that North Carolina HB 589 reduces early voting days, eliminates same-day voter registration during early voting, prohibits the counting of provisional ballots cast outside a voter's precinct, and imposes a voter ID requirement--all in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. DOJ argues that the changes have both a discriminatory purpose and a discriminatory effect. The Department also seeks "bail-in" under Section 3(c) of the VRA.

The cases come in the wake of the Court's ruling this summer in Shelby County v. Holder striking Section 4(b) of the VRA, the coverage formula for the preclearance requirement. By striking Section 4(b), the Court rendered Section 5 preclearance a dead letter, unless and until Congress can rewrite it in a way that would pass muster with this Court--that is, likely never. Section 3(c) bail-in works very much like Section 5 preclearance, though. If acourt orders bail-in, it will retain jurisdiction over the state "for such period as it may deem appropriate and during such period no voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect at the time the proceeding was commenced shall be enforced unless and until the court finds that such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color . . . ."

The North Carolina and Texas cases are sure to raise two new fronts in the assault on the Voting Rights Act: challenges to congressional authority to enact Section 3(c) bail-in, and challenges to congressional authority under Section 2 to ban state laws that have a discriminatory effect (even if not a discriminatory purpose).

Here's a bit from the Times piece that helps explain the edu-ese and pseudo-scientific language in COPE's complaint in the Kansas case:

By questioning the science--often getting down to very technical details--the evolution challengers in Texas are following a strategy increasingly deployed by others around the country.

There is little open talk of creationism. Instead they borrow buzzwords common in education, "critical thinking," saying there is simply not enough evidence to prove evolution.

COPE went even further, though, arguing that the Kansas standards (with (secular) evolution as a centerpiece) themselves represent a kind of religious orthodoxy, and that Kansas in imposing this orthodoxy, without balancing it with "origin science," violated the religion clauses, free speech, and the Eqaul Protection Clause. In doing so, COPE adopts the language and legal claims of opponents of creationism and tries to create an equivalence between its position and the position of science--putting itself on par with science, both on the "science" and in its legal positions in relation to science, and casting science as a kind of religion. Then, after creating this topsy-turvey world where religion is science and science is religion, COPE asks the question: If "origin scientists" have an equal claim to the truth, doesn't it violate equality, speech, and religious principles to exclude their position from the curriculum?

This isn't new, but as the COPE complaint and NYT piece suggest, creationism advocates may be getting a little better at clothing their positions in official- and technical-sounding langauge, and in turning the same constitutional claims that proponents of a curriculum based on science have used against creationism right back on them, in support of creationism. The strategy is designed to frame the debate as one scientific theory against another scientific theory, not science against religion, and to put the competing policy and constitutional claims on par in order to gain traction under the religion clauses, free speech, and equal protection.

The ruling means that the law can't ban these papers from running alcohol ads. But it also means that the law stay on the books and ineffect as to other student newspapers, unless and until they successfully challenge it, too.

Virginia law says,

Advertisements of alcoholic beverages are not allowed in college student publications unless in reference to a dining establishment . . . .

Student newspapers at Virginia Tech and U.Va. sued, arguing that the ban violated free speech. In a first round of litigation, the Fourth Circuit ruled that the ban didn't violate the First Amendment on its face. But the court remanded the case to determine whether the ban violated the First Amendment as applied to these two papers.

The court ruled last week that it did. In particular, the court held that the ban isn't appropriately tailored to the state's aim--that is, that the ban isn't more extensive than necessary to serve the government's interest--and thus violated the fourth prong of the Central Hudson test for regulations of commercial speech.

The problem was that the ban was designed to reduce under-age drinking, but the majority of the newspapers' readers were over 21. "Thus, the College newspapers have a protected interest in printing non-misleading alcohol advertisements, just as a majority of the College Newspapers' readers have a protected interest in receiving that information." Op. at 21.

As to the state's interest in preventing alcohol abuse by those over 21, the court said that the ban did exact what the Supreme Court prohibited in Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc.: it sought to "keep people in the dark for what the government perceives to be their own good." Op. at 22 (quoting Sorrell).

Over at the New Yorker blog, Lincoln Caplan's piece, "Justice Ginsburg and Footnote Four" analyzes Ginsburg's discussion last week at the National Constitution Center, arguing that one of her statements "deserves more attention than it has gotten."

Recall that the 1938 case of Carolene Products involved a federal statute regulating the shipment of "filled milk" (skimmed milk
to which nonmilk fat is added so that it may seem to be like whole milk
or even cream). It may be that this case was also on Ginsburg's mind during the oral arguments of another one of last term's cases: In her questioning of Paul Clement, who represented BLAG, in United States v. Windsorabout the constitutionality of DOMA, she condensed
his argument as saying that in granting same-sex marriages, states were
nevertheless saying there were really "two kinds of marriage; the full
marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage." As we noted at the time, Ginsburg's allusion would have special resonance for those who recalled Carolene Products.

19th Annual Mid-Atlantic People of ColorLegal Scholarship Conference 2014Hosted by the University of Baltimore School of LawBaltimore, MDJanuary 23-25, 2014

– Conference Theme & Call for Papers –

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and Beyond:The Historical and Contemporary Implications of Progressive Action and Human FulfillmentHonoring and Critiquing the 50th Anniversary of Johnson’s Vision

In May 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson unveiled his revolutionary plans for the Great Society. As he explained it, Americans “have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. . . . The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice.”

According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, who wrote Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, Johnson’s Great Society would be based on “progressive action” and the “possibilities for human fulfillment.” This action and fulfillment meant that regaining control of our society required us to end policies that threatened and degraded humanity.

Johnson’s Great Society reforms, included the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, Equal Opportunity Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Social Security expansion, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Higher Education Act, Head Start, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, and the Open Housing Act of 1968. These laws extended and expanded the Bill of Rights and continued and expanded the programs initiated in Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s and Truman’s Fair Deal in the late 1940s and early 1050s. As a result of LBJ’s programs, America’s official poverty rate declined throughout the 1960s, reaching a low of 11.2 percent in 1974, down from 19 percent in 1964, and most recently settling at 15.1 percent in 2010. According to Dylan Matthews, who wrote Poverty in the 50 Years Since ‘The Other America,’ in Five Charts, Johnson’s Great Society programs, which included the War on Poverty, “made a real and lasting difference.” Moreover, according to Demos, an estimated 40 million Americans avoided official poverty due to such programs as food stamps and Medicaid.

Unfortunately, what is also true is that the Vietnam War, which Johnson escalated and only at the end of his administration moved to end, crippled his domestic economic policies and undermined his goals for true racial equality. Despite the War on Poverty and dramatic changes in Civil Rights, racially concentrated poverty remains with us. Since the Johnson years, America has weathered the recessions of the 1980s and early 1990s, the late ‘90s dot com bubble, our current recession, the national security encroachment on civil liberties, the rise and fall of the Occupy Movement, the waning of the Arab Spring, and two middle east wars since 9-11.

It is clear that Johnson’s Great Society programs have saved millions of Americans from the depth of official poverty. It also true that Johnson’s vision, to which he was truly committed, staggered and failed when the civil rights movement dovetailed with political marginalization, economic inequality, pervasive racial discrimination, and imperialist policies. The Moynihan Report, the Watts Riots and urban unrests, and the emotional and financial suck of Vietnam prevented Johnson from deeply redressing America’s lingering poverty.

At MAPOC 2014, we intend to explore the furthest implications of President Johnson’s domestic and foreign policies, especially the impact of these policies on progressive action and human fulfillment, as we collectively explore and analyze the contemporary implications of Johnson’s Great Society. From these implications, the conference planning committee is seeking papers and panel proposals on the following substantive but not exhaustive subjects:

-- A Hand Up: The Meaningful Tension Between Formal Equality and Substantive Outcomes under the Civil Rights Act of 1964-- Beyond Legislative Bogs and Dangerous Political Animals: President Obama’s Legislative Agenda and the Limits of Second-Term Progressivism-- Endangered Citizens?: Rights and Remedies after State v. Zimmerman-- Equality, Choice, and Happiness: the Rise and Fall of DOMA-- Guns or Butter: Social Welfare Programs, Modern Problems of Central Banks, Debt Slavery, and Foreign Policies-- Medicare, Healthcare, and Welfare: the Poor, the Elderly, and the Needy-- Moynihan and the Contemporary (In)Stability of the Black Family-- Racial (Dis)Harmony Then and Today-- Voting Rights: Shelby County v. Holder and the Promise of One Citizen, One Vote

Paper submissions must include a working title, bios, abstract, and contact information.Panel proposals must also include the foregoing information for each of the panel’s participants, and the organizer’s contact information, all of which must be submitted together only by the organizer.Submit Papers and Panel Proposals by September 30, 2013 to: Reginald Leamon Robinson, Howard University, Conference Chair and Founder, MAPOC 2014: light_warrior@verizon.net.